“Scared of what?” Seemed a bit extreme, especially for a wolf.
“A replay of nine years ago.”
“I guess he took it hard. I know I did.”
In a flash she saw herself curled on a hotel bed, fetal position, weeping into her pillow with open-mouthed sobs so hard she kept gagging. Crying herself to sleep, waking up with swollen eyes and bursting into tears. Eleven days of microwaved soup in the same bowl, no shower, same yellow-and-orange pajamas. Eating in bed, shuffling to the hotel sink to drop the empty bowl, shuffling back to bed. Knees to her chest, wrenching her gut with sobs. Days passing that way.
Never had she considered Trevor might have felt it too, not when he had smashed what she had tried with all her might to keep whole.
“Ezra, I want to know. How bad was it?”
Ezra sighed, looked around the gathering. He motioned her to follow him to an empty cluster of camping chairs. Closest thing to privacy when more than half the adults present could eavesdrop by accident from acres away. They didn’t sit though. Ezra backed up to a thick magnolia and let the trunk support him.
Quietly he said, “He didn’t eat for eleven days. Mom kept him hydrated, but water was all he’d allow in his mouth. A fever set in on day four, spiked up and up. He was—” His voice broke, and he shook his head hard as if to clear an image. “He lay in bed for a week, absolutely still, glazed eyes. The family took turns watching over him. I really thought my brother was dying.”
“Oh, Ezra.” And in his mind, in Sydney’s, Kelsey had been the cause. She wrapped the wolf soon to be her big brother in the tightest hug she could, and he hugged her back. “I am so sorry. And you’re forgiven no matter how you’ve felt about me. I mean it.”
“Thanks, Kels.”
“Ann tried to tell me, didn’t she. I had two voicemails from her that week, but I freaked out and deleted them.”
“I know she called you once. Didn’t know about the second time.”
“And Aunt Maggie didn’t know at all, or she would’ve used it as leverage to bring me home. She blew up my phone that week, and she never mentioned it.”
“We love Maggie, but this was private. It stayed within the pack.”
Within the pack…yet Ann had tried to tell her. “What happened on day twelve?”
Ezra swept a knuckle past the corner of his eye, blinked hard. “His fever broke. He was too weak to sit up, but Mom brought him some soup, and he let her feed him. Sydney just…broke down. I didn’t know until that day, she’d thought it too, that we were losing him. Our baby brother.”
Soup. One cracked white bowl, left behind in the hotel cupboard. Black spoons, left behind in the drawer, somebody’s unused takeout plasticware.
“Do you remember what your mom fed him?” she whispered.
But she knew. Fate. Hundreds of miles from her blue-eyed boy, torn limb from limb or feeling like it. Chicken and stars soup. The tiny squishy stars easy on her raw throat.
“It’s weird,” Ezra said, “but yeah, I remember. It was chicken and stars.”
She hugged him again, and this time she held on. Soft tears fell, cleansed the last inky drops of distrust in her boy.
“And somehow I still missed that y’all were life mates,” Ezra said with a little laugh. He patted her back as he’d done when he was thirteen, Kelsey ten and weeping for the death of a baby bird fallen from its nest. “There, Kels. He’s all right.”
“How are your folks not mad at me? How’s Ann not mad after—after all that?”
His low rumble brimmed over with affection. “Because it’s her. She always did wish you’d come home.”
“I need to tell her.” She had to say more than a thank-you, had to understand how Ann’s policy of forgiveness applied even to this. She stepped back from Ezra’s hug shaking her head. Her surrogate parents were a marvel.
Ezra said, “They won’t be here. Off antiquing. They miss every sixth cookout or so, scouring the state of Tennessee for amethyst glass and whatever else they’re on about. It varies.”
“Oh. Right. I remember.”
“But your mate just turned down the lane.”
Two miles away, but of course Ezra would recognize the scent of his brother, of his brother’s truck.
“Smells like drywall dust. I bet he got hung up on a project for somebody.”
